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Starcrawler are a truly original young band from the city of Los Angeles. Led by their nineteen year old frontwoman Arrow de Wilde, their take on dark and heavy rock & roll both recorded and through their chaotic live shows, brings such music into the 21st century as an almost transgressive pop music. 2019 brings lots of new music and touring, starting with their massive new single “She Gets Around,” a song the band calls “an anthem for backstabbers.” It is a first look at their soon to be announced new album and follows December’s “Hollywood Ending” which earned praise from NPR, Rolling Stone, and spent several weeks at #1 on specialty radio.

Capturing Arrow de Wilde’s manic live performance, “She Gets Around” was produced and mixed by Nick Launay (Nick Cave, David Byrne, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and was the first of many times to come that guitarist Henri Cash, drummer Austin Smith and bassist Tim Franco have had a chance to really spend time in a studio and aim to make a record vs simply document a live moment. “She Gets Around” hints at 90s alt-rock bands such as The Breeders and Nirvana, while showcasing the strange, one-of-a-kind spirit and ferocity that is Starcrawler.

The new year also brings a long slate of touring as they record and release their second LP also produced by Nick Launay. This summer brings slots at Glastonbury, Eurorockennes and more festivals as well as upcoming US tours with the likes of Beck, Cage The Elephant, Spoon, and The Distillers. This fall, they embark on a full headline world tour for the first time.

Starcrawler are all LA natives and met in high school. Their self-titled LP was released one year ago in January by Rough Trade Records to rave reviews. Since then, they’ve toured non-stop all over the world, including triumphant sets at Primavera, Rock Am Ring, Download Festival, Voodoo Festival, Fuji Rock, Reading, Leeds and more. In March, they won the 2018 SXSW Grulke prize for best US act after blowing minds at each of their nine shows. They were VEVO DSCVR artists with video testimonial from Shirley Manson who said “I feel like Starcrawler, and in particular Arrow, are really challenging the norms in which women are seen in music.” The amount of support they have received from their fellow artists has been overwhelming. They opened shows for the Foo Fighters at Olympic Park in London, and toured with The Distillers and MC5.

They have made a constant name for themselves not only live, but with their incredible visuals that both harken back at points to the 90s heyday of MTV but also speak to their own highly developed aesthetic and individual spirit. See videos for “Hollywood Ending” and “I Love LA.” Their upcoming LP with Nick Launay makes explicit that this group of young artists are now figuring out how to capture their wild energy, spirit and engrossing aesthetic and lay it all down on tape.

Rock n’ roll has always served as a means to elevate the fringe of society, though it’s
accentuated the plights of the outcasts and misfits in different ways throughout the
years. In its infancy, rock was a playful rebuttal against segregation and Puritanism.
In the ‘60s, it became a vehicle for an elevated consciousness. In the years following
the Summer of Love and the clampdown on Flower Power, that countercultural
spirit adopted the aggravated and occasionally nihilistic edge of bands like The
Stooges, Black Sabbath, MC5, and The New York Dolls. And then as the ‘80s
approached, popular rock n’ roll turned into a relatively benign celebration of
hedonism and decadence, but that contingent of dark mystics from the ‘70s who
lifted the veil and used music as a means of rallying people to altered planes had left
their mark. It was an undercurrent in rock that would never die, but would
percolate in corners of the underground. Today we can see it manifest in LA’s Death
Valley Girls.
The group feels less like a band and more like a travelling caravan. At their core,
vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Bonnie Bloomgarden and guitarist Larry Schemel
channel Death Valley Girls’ modern spin on Fun House’s sonic exorcisms, early ZZ
Top’s desert-blasted riffage, and Sabbath’s occult menace. Their relentless touring
schedule means that the remainder of the group is rounded out by whichever like-
minded compatriots can get in the van. On their third album Darkness Rains, bassist
Alana Amram, drummer Laura Harris, and a rotating cast of guests like Shannon Lay,
The Kid (Laura Kelsey) and members of The Make Up, The Shivas, and Moaning help
elevate the band from their rogue beginnings to a communal ritualistic musical
force. On the surface level, Death Valley Girls churn out the hypercharged, in the red,
scuzzy rock every generation yearns for, but there is a more subversive force
percolating beneath the surface that imbues the band with an exhilarating cosmic
energy.
Death Valley Girls’ sophomore album Glow In The Dark was based on the concept
that many of us are trying to become more enlightened, and you can tell by the way
they ‘glow in the dark.’ Darkness Rains goes a step further, attempting to shift the
consciousness of those that have not yet considered how we are all connected and
how that relates to the way we view life beyond death. Those that ‘glow’ can use the
songs on Darkness Rains as new chants—or they can be used for pure
entertainment. “Songs come from beyond and other worlds, you just have to tune
into the right radio wave signal to dial them in. Our signal happens to be in a 1970
Dodge Charger Spaceship,” says Schemel.
Album opener “More Dead” is a rousing wake up call, with a hypnotic pentatonic
guitar riff and an intoxicating blown-out fuzz-wah solo underscoring Bloomgarden’s
consciousness-rattling proclamation that you’re “more dead than alive.” The pace
builds with “(One Less Thing) Before I Die”, a minute-and-a-half distillate of
Detroit’s classic proto-punk sound. But at track three, Death Valley Girls hit their
stride with “Disaster (Is What We’re After)”, a gritty, swaggering rager that takes the
most boisterous moments off Exile On Main Street and beefs it up with Zeppelin’s
devil’s-note blues. Darkness Rains retains its intoxicating convocations across ten

tracks, climaxing on an astral plane with the hypnotic guitar drones and cult-like
chants of “TV In Jail On Mars.”
“Learn from the stars and beyond! Be happy and thankful we got to live together on
Earth at the same time! And death is just a shift—stay alive and awake,”
Bloomgarden and Schemel respond when asked for a final thought on Death Valley
Girls. “Embrace the darkness and don’t fear the Reaper.” Suicide Squeeze Records is
proud to further the cause by releasing Darkness Rains on October 5 th , 2018 on
LP/CD/CS/ and digital formats. The first vinyl pressing is limited to 1,500 copies.
Both the cassette and vinyl include digital downloads.